'Little Ice Age ' (Maunder-Dalton) circulation patterns are emerging and more rapid world cooling is taking over.

Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist of WeatherAction.com (26th April) says:

"The Sun’s magnetic field is getting into a muddle as one half of it changes out of step with the other and this muddled behavior is likely to become very marked in MAY.

"This strange behavior was pointed out by Japanese researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Riken research foundation* who say this was the sort of behavior which probably took place during low periods of solar activity in the past** and which drove the world into a cold state of longer winters, cold Spring months and lousy summers.

"At the same time independent observers have noticed an increase in Little Ice Age type (Maunder-Dalton type) weather events and circulation patterns around the world such as more extreme hailstorms and cyclonic cold weather in Britain and Ireland with the Jet stream shifted well south***.

The sun may be entering a period of reduced activity that could result in lower temperatures on Earth, according to Japanese researchers.

Officials of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Riken research foundation said on April 19 that the activity of sunspots appeared to resemble a 70-year period in the 17th century in which London’s Thames froze over and cherry blossoms bloomed later than usual in Kyoto.

In that era, known as the Maunder Minimum, temperatures are estimated to have been about 2.5 degrees lower than in the second half of the 20th century.

The Japanese study found that the trend of current sunspot activity is similar to records from that period.

The researchers also found signs of unusual magnetic changes in the sun. Normally, the sun’s magnetic field flips about once every 11 years. In 2001, the sun’s magnetic north pole, which was in the northern hemisphere, flipped to the south.

Frank Hill is an astronomer at the U.S. National Solar Observatory. Last summer (June, 2011) Hill and colleagues announced their conclusions that sunspot activity might be headed for a dramatic drop in activity, beginning around the year 2019. The sun normally follows a cycle of activity lasting about 11 years. The current cycle, Cycle 24, is now heading towards its peak. Frank Hill and colleagues are looking toward the next cycle — Cycle 25. Based on data showing decades-long trends, they are suggesting its peak might be delayed or that it might not have a typical peak in activity at all. Hill spoke more about the recent sunspot study with EarthSky’s Jorge Salazar.

Frank Hill told EarthSky that — while his team did suggest a drop in solar activity beginning around 2019 — they did not suggest Earth would cool as a result.

Are you familiar with media reports that have gotten this story wrong?

Yes, actually. It seems to me that a lot of reports have come out and said that we have predicted a new ice age. That is making the leap from low sunspot activity to cooling. We did not predict a little ice age.

A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth's upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. The heat has since dissipated, but there's more to come as the solar cycle intensifies.

Before proceeding, credit where credit is due. The concept of a relationship between the sun and ENSO events isn’t new. It’s been discussed at least twice on this blog (here and here) and in detail by Theodor Landscheidt (here).The connection between ENSO events and warming isn’t new either. Three years ago Bob Tisdale (here) showed how ENSO events caused periodic upward shifts in the SST record that explained all of the recent global warming. Also not new, thanks to our host, is the theory that the oceans periodically release stored heat to the air (here). So a h/t to these gentlemen and to any others I may have omitted.

What follows is my attempt to condense these hypotheses into a narrative that uses observational data to illustrate how the solar cycle, ENSO events and the release of stored ocean heat, and not man-made greenhouse gases, combined to cause the recent global warming, which began, incidentally, in 1976.

ENSO Events and Solar Cycles

Figure 1 plots the Niño3.4 Index since 1960 (the Bivariate ENSO, Multivariate ENSO and Oceanic Niño Indices give essentially the same results). I’ve used the commonly-accepted +/-0.5C threshold to define individual Niño and Niña events and the zero crossover to define Niños and Niñas that transition directly into each other, and the duration of each event is shown by the red and blue vertical stripes.

I had this to say in 2010 - For those of you who follow David Hathaway's Solar Cycle forecasts, it is not looking good for Solar Cycle 25. Solar Cycle 25 is due to start about the end of 2020, nothing dramatic about that, apart from it WILL be lower in its Sunspot count then Solar Cycle 24, and boy oh boy how the numbers are starting to fall!

I have kept track of the Solar Cycle 24 forecasts from David Hathaway, and the latest prediction compared from two years or so ago has taken yet another fall...This is what David Hathaway has to say from the recent March 2012 Solar Cycle Prediction Update

Relations between the length of a sunspot cycle and the average temperature in the same and the next cycle are calculated for a number of meteorologicalstations in Norway and in the North Atlantic region. No significant trend is found between the length of a cycle and the average temperature in the same cycle, but a significant negative trend is found between the length of a cycle and the temperature in the next cycle. This provides a tool to predict an average temperature decrease of at least 1.0 ◦C from solar cycle 23 to 24 for the stations and areas analyzed. We find for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 25–56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun. For 3 North Atlantic stations we get 63–72% solar contribution. This points to the Atlantic currents as reinforcing a solarsignal.

"We can expect the onset of a deep bicentennial minimum of total solar irradiance (TSI) in approximately 2042±11 and the 19th deep minimum of global temperature in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11. After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055±11." --Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Russian Academy of Science, 1 February 2012

Abstract

Temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation of the system Earth-atmosphere emitted to space always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy.

That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope are practically always in an unbalanced state. Average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time period will reliably determine the course and value of both an energy excess accumulated by the Earth or the energy deficit in the thermal budget which, with account for data of the TSI forecast, can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes.

From early 90s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014.

Based on the slowing of the Sun’s “Great Conveyor Belt”, he predicted that

“The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries.”
He is very likely to have got the year wrong in that Solar Cycle 25 is unlikely to start until 2025.